[WikiEN-l] Re: ALERT: Idea for new feature: "Who's watching this page?"

Tue Oct 21 03:31:58 UTC 2003

This is absolutely a terrible idea. It's perfectly sufficient that we can 
look at who has edited a page and what they have done. The only reason I 
can see to know who's watching a page is to be better able to track what 
someone may decide to edit.

Between [[Problem users]] and [[Vandalism]] and the aforementioned page 
histories, that seems to provide more than enough resources for tracking 
things. I imagine that developers can look at someone's Watchlist, and 
that's fine, but I don't want folks with an axe to grind to be able to 
"watch my watching." And the idea of having the default be that people 
can't see one's watchlist is better, but I think the whole idea still 
undermines Wikifaith and adds an unwelcome level of surveillance.

And one more thing, I noticed this a couple of hours ago on Village Pump 
page because the person who suggested it, User:Paul_Klenk, had just been 
adding fuel to the flame on the Mother Teresa talk page 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mother_Teresa#Something_we_can_all_agree_on>, 
although he has also added some constructive comments. He's new, so this 
isn't meant to trash him, but this is a perfect example of where it would 
*not* be helpful to have the ability to see other people's watchlists.

Thanks, Brian

  At 02:15 AM 10/21/03 +0000, you wrote:
>From: "Graham Burnett" <grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk>
>Idea for new feature: "Who's watching this page?"
>
>This got mooted on the Village Pump today- I'm STRONGLY against this, to the
>extent that I'd withdraw from wikipedia with a demand that any history of
>pages I'd watched be deleted from public record if it were to be implemeted.
>Suffice to say many of us watch certain pages for many differing reasons
>which are nobody elses business.
>
>Nuf said i hope.
>
>Graham (Quercus Robur)